1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus such as a portable video camera recorder and a grasp member thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are image pickup apparatuses having a grasp member fitted thereto for convenience of portability when carrying such image pickup apparatuses. Conventionally, a grasp member is joined at its front and rear leg portions to an image pickup apparatus body. Specifically, the front leg portion is joined to the image pickup apparatus body in a substantially vertically arranged state (for example, see JP-A-2003-259171).
FIGS. 3 and 4 are perspective views illustrating a conventional image pickup apparatus. A body portion 12d of a grasp member is disposed on the top of an image pickup apparatus body 1 in parallel to the image pickup apparatus body 1 with a gap therebetween. The front portion of the body portion 12d of the grasp member is joined to the image pickup apparatus body 1 through a front leg portion 12a and the rear portion of the body portion 12d is joined to the image pickup apparatus body 1 through a rear leg portion 2b. The front leg portion 12a has a quadrangular prism shape and extends in the vertical direction between the image pickup apparatus body 1 and the body portion 12d of the grasp member.
Such a grasp member 12 of the image pickup apparatus requires excellent operability of operation rings 4 and 5 for adjusting a focus and an aperture diaphragm of a lens barrel portion 3 as an operation target at the time of picking up an image with the image pickup apparatus, and a wide front visual range at the time of holding the image pickup apparatus body 1 for picking up an image.
However, such a conventional grasp member has a problem that the operability is deteriorated because a hand of a user comes in contact with the front leg portion 12a at the time of adjusting the operation rings 4 and 5. In addition, as shown in FIG. 4, when the user holds the image pickup apparatus body 1 with his hand and his left eye approaches a view finder 7, the visual range of the left eye directly viewing a subject or a background (where the visual line is indicated by an arrow D) is hindered by the front leg portion 12a, thereby blocking the front visual range.